Film editing has always been a part of film production. Historically, films have followed a single sequence. Thus, in editing a film, editors cut and pasted film portions one after the other. With the advent of computer gaming however, different events take place depending upon the decision of the user. When the user is given a choice of possible decisions to make, and makes one, the computer's programming accesses certain video image data as a consequence of the user's choice. Thus, in video games, frames of video images are not compiled to be viewed in a simple single stream, but must include the ability to branch into at least one of two time-sequence-based directions depending upon the user input. Accordingly, depending on an event or decision of the user, the computer can access the video segment which corresponds to the chosen time path.
The notion of branching video sequences has been utilized previously, for example, in movie maps. In that application, a user can proceed through a data space which is correlated to a position on a map. When the user reaches an intersection of streets on the map which is represented by a branching node in the data space, the user can choose to take one of a plurality of presented paths. The user directional and/or speed input is provided by a track ball or joy stick.
In game development, a developer might establish a game plan in the form of branched time lines so that he or she may edit film or digital video data to correspond to those time lines. However, this process is cumbersome because the developer must cut and paste the digital video data in an ad hoc manner, since he or she does not have the ability to precisely match the time duration of a particular stream of video images to the time lines of the game plan.